see more space rubbish here

Una put up a link to a blog called “Dear Lover”.

It’s an anonymous blog by some Irish man with all the things he can’t say to his girlfriend. Some are inane, some are dirty and some are domestic tensions but it’s all very sweet.

blogrolled

Thanks to the recent good weather, I’ve been eating a lot of Tangle Twisters lately. Last week I noticed in the ingredients that they’re coloured using the chemical “Curcumin”

Curcumin is found in tumeric and is what causes curries to be yellow. It’s sometimes written as the E number E100. Scientist love curcumin because it’s been shown to have anti-cancer, anti-arthritis, anti-alzheimers, anti-malaria and ant-HIV effects.

So if you want to avoid all these horrible diseases, tangle twisters and curry are the way to go.

Awwweeeesome!

See more photos here and read more about the eruption and evacuation here.

Went to see Thao Nguyen and the Get Down Stay Down on Sunday night. It was possibly the emptiest gig I’ve ever been to. There was about 30 people there. Thankfully we were rewarded with a river of free mojitos by some bacardi promotions dudes. Support was Paul Hourican who is a great singer/songwriter (and hails from my hometown!).

I really didn’t know what to expect from Thao. She came on stage with a toothbrush in her pocket and seemed generally enthused that more than 10 people had showed up. Although her singing style made the lyrics even harder to make out live, she really rocked the house and is a little demon guitarist.Thao possessed some sweet kooky banter that was very much in style of her songwriting. After the gig we chatted with her and she was really nice and appreciative. It’s really great to meet nice bands.

Listen to her track “Swimming Pools” here

Great sketch from The Idiots of Ants

Albert Hoffman has died at the ripe old age of 102. In 1945, while synthesising a lysergic acid compound, he accidentally absorbed some through his fingers (always wear gloves kids!) and noticed his perception changed remarkably. Being the well balanced, careful scientist he was, Hoffman then ingested 250mg of this chemical (now known as LSD) and went for a cycle home.

Hoffman was a strong advocate for the medicinal and mind expanding effects of LSD and was annoyed at the irresponsible use of the drug in the 1960’s. He called the drug “medicine for the soul” and commented on its positive use in psychoanalysis. As well as LSD, Hoffman also later discovered the chemical active ingredient in magic mushrooms. He also wrote a book called “LSD: My Problem Child.”

For a good read, jump over to wikipedia which has detailed description of Hoffman’s “Bicycle Day“

The stupid UCD Ball is on outside my building, I’m trying to type up a grant report and these bastards are playing outside.

Too lazy to write anything properly lately so I’ll recycle this “How cool shit works” article I wrote for Trinity News 4 years ago. It’s about Laser Eye Surgery. Reading over it again it made me laugh in some parts but mostly cringe deeply that I could ever publish such waffly non-sequitir nonsense. Can’t say I’ve learnt much since.

Glasses, they can make you appear smarter than you really are, can conceal your secret superhero identity and in truly desperate times can be used to persuade people not to hit you in the face. One thing they are not though, is cool. Over the years, people have tried ways to overcome the need to wear their spectacles. These solutions include the successful contact lenses and the not so successful “stumble around blindly”. Recently however, clever people have combined several cool things such as “burning things with a laser” and “being able to see things far away” to produce LASER EYE SURGERY! “But Tom, shining lasers in your eyes is dangerous, a smart spectacled person told me!” I hear you say. Not true, let me explain…

To first have laser eye surgery one must have an eye defect (yes, I was surprised too). Although there are many different eye disorders, laser surgery works best for myopia. Myopia (also called short sightedness) affects your ability to see things far away but you can read and see close things fine. This is caused by bad focusing in your eye. In myopia, the bad focus is usually caused by an eyeball that is too long. The eye has two parts that focus stuff. These are the cornea and the lens. The cornea forms part of a natural bulging curve in front of your pupils (if you don’t believe me have a feel but wipe your hands on your jeans first). The rest of the focusing is done by the lens. The lens is adjustable by tiny muscles that we see as the iris (aka “the colourdy bit”). The principle behind modern laser eye surgery is that the cornea is reshaped by laser so it focuses images correctly. This reshaping technique works best on myopia but can also work on near sightedness and astigmatism (having a funny cornea shape, probably caused by too much eye gouging).

Although this may all sounds easy, “reshaping” the eye is a delicate process. Several tests must be done to check the eye shape is within a workable range and so they know where they need to point the laser! The laser used to reshape the eye is literally a “cool laser”. It produces no heat except on the tiny area it is focused and by tiny I mean smaller than a baby weasel! Some laser beams can focus to a space of 0.25 microns. That means it could slice a single hair from the aforementioned weasel into 200 very thin wispy weasel hairs!

However, although most people report a huge improvement in vision it is rare that perfect vision is restored. The surgery has the advantage of being very quick and anaesthetic eye drops make it painless. Surgery itself normally takes about 15 minutes and you can return to normal googling, gazing and glancing in a day or two. Problems after surgery are quite rare but mainly include difficulty with lights or blurry, hazy vision. These problems can normally be fixed by another surgery or ironically, by wearing prescription lenses.

With so many people jumping on this lucrative bandwagon, it is important that if you are interested in getting this surgery that you go to a recognised, certified professional. In Ireland the procedure, pre and postoperative care add up to around €2500. With that kind of price tag, laser surgery is not for everyone. You might be better off saving your money for other cool things like an electric guitar or a giant glow-in-the-dark yeti figure. Make up your own minds! Until next time, stay cool amigos…